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Location: United States

Member Since: March 25, 2012

Diem-Tran Kratzke

Biography

Cung Thi Lan was born in Nha Trang, Vietnam. She was a middle school teacher in Vietnam. She left Vietnam in 1989 in a harrowing escape from communism, a journey described in her memoir Unforgettable Kindness. She settled in the United States with her husband and an infant son in 1990. She has a bachelor’s degree in Early Childhood Education from the University of The District of Columbia and a master’s degree in Special Education from the George Mason University. She has worked for the Boat People SOS and the Office of Head Start. Currently she resides in Maryland with her family and works as a social worker.

Unforgettable Kindness is one of several stories in the most recently published book written in Vietnamese by Cung Thi Lan. It is the main story of the book, describing the ordeal the author and her family and other boat people had to endure to escape from the communist country of Vietnam to find freedom elsewhere after 1975.

Other published books in the Vietnamese language by the author are available in print:
Nha Trang Memoir (2004)
Two Sisters (2005)
Sorrowful Love (2006)
The Distance of Eternal Separation (2009)

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Diem-Tran Kratzke was born in Saigon, Vietnam. She left Vietnam with her parents and siblings in 1975, after the Vietnam War, and settled in the United States. She attended the Northern Illinois University, studying biology, and the University of Illinois, studying statistics, before moving to the Washington DC Metropolitan Area. She added a degree in Secondary Education from the George Mason University to her resume since then.
She has three children who were born in different states as she moved from West to East: Washington, Illinois, Virginia. Her children’s career choices are as diverse as their birth locations: piano performance, medicine, and computer sciences. She has two sons-in-law and two grand kittens.

Ms. Kratzke is currently employed as a mathematical statistician at a federal government agency and teaches mathematics at a Fairfax County public school. She feels very lucky and believes in giving back to society. She has offered her volunteer services to the Girl Scout Council of the Nation’s Capital, the Fairfax County Pets on Wheels program, the Reston Soccer Association, the AARP, the AAUW, Fairfax County public schools, her church, and various other organizations.

When she does not compute statistics and teach, she fills her calendar with activities such as writing, playing soccer, and acting for the Fairfax County Improv troupe. She occasionally stops to smell the flowers.